Unplugged Gaming News and Views

August 29th, 2019

So you may have heard of the collaborations between The Op (formerly USAopoly, best known for its hundreds of versions of Monopoly) and Games Workshop (best known for Warhammer 40K and numerous fantasy or sci-fi board games). One of the first announcements to come from the team-up was on licensed versions of the classic fantasy board game, Talisman. These licenses took the game in new directions, though, to be sure – Talisman: Kingdom Hearts Edition, and Talisman: Batman Super-Villains Edition. I’ve had the same internal struggle other Talisman fans may have gone through, wondering if these adaptations will “mess up” the game I enjoyed so much. I’ve tried to hold my judgement until learning more from the press releases, and in the process, decided I’m going to check them out. First, the Kingdom Hearts press release…

Talisman: Kingdom Hearts Edition reveals Sora, Kairi, Riku, King Mickey, Goofy, and other comrades as figures at the helm of an exciting and different way to play the tabletop classic. Inspired by the original Kingdom Hearts video game franchise, the 2- to 6-player game’s objective compels players to acquire the needed Strength and Magic to seal the Door to Darkness and keep Heartless from consuming the communal worlds.

An artful gameboard with three regions, custom marbleized six-sided dice, tokens, and cards maintain the beloved aspects and exploratory spirit of “The Magical Quest Game” while offering lighthearted Disney nostalgia. Memorable locations such as Never Land and Traverse Town, Munny-themed currency, Gummi Paths and more will comprise a brand new experience by incorporating much-loved characters, worlds, and details from the Kingdom Hearts universe, surprising and delighting fans everywhere.

Talisman: Batman Super-Villains Edition allows players to take on the role of Gotham City’s notorious evil-doers, sneaking and fighting their way through Arkham Asylum’s two floors and central tower to be the first to subdue Batman and successfully release its dangerous inmates.

The anti-heroic objective in this take on the classic fantasy tabletop game focuses on building the Health, Strength, and Cunning of the Caped Crusader’s enemies. The game suits 2-6 players ages 13 and up, and can be played cooperatively or against other foes before one winner can earn the reputation of King or Queen of the criminal underworld.

Witnesses also report a custom illustrated game board featuring artwork from the best-selling DC comic series “New 52” era, 13 plastic character figures, more than 100 Encounter cards, six-sided dice, and stat boards to monitor each character, easing traditional role-playing game elements into the hands of collectors eager to get in on Batman’s titular Talisman debut.

Do these sound like Talisman? Not exactly. Talisman was one of the first fantasy quest board games to capture the general feel of advancing your character, meeting strange creatures, killing them, and taking their stuff. Calling it a “fantasy quest” game was appropriate, as a full game session might take 1-2 hours, but more likely would take an entire afternoon – much like a D&D session. In fact, just getting through an entire game felt like a quest, and added to the feeling of victory if you were crowned the winner. These newer Talisman games sound suspiciously… new. Fans of any genre know the sense of dread that comes with seeing your favorite property – from games, to movies, to books, to comics, and any other fandom, really – treated in a way that doesn’t feel like it honors the original source. If not Talisman, there’s surely several things you can think of that bring up those feelings right now. There’s excitement about revisiting the property you love, for sure, but also fear of tainting its memory. Fans of The Dark Crystal are in the final stages of this fear as I write this, with the Netflix prequel The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance about to release. (Please be awesome… please be awesome…)

On the other hand, it seems only natural that games (and movies, and books) which inspire other successful imitations should have additional versions, as some portion of the gaming public clearly wants those variations. Monopoly has been adapted to many, many themes, and while I still argue Monopoly is a terrible game (see our review if you need convincing), it continues to be supremely popular and well known. Risk has had several mediocre variations, a few interesting ones (Risk: Godstorm – which may have lent at least one mechanics idea to Blood Rage – and Risk: 2210 AD come to mind), and a genre-defining innovation (Risk: Legacy, firmly establishing the Legacy style of game). Even games like Scrabble and Clue have had a variety of adaptations/mutations to other themes – some of them quite good. For example, give Harry Potter Clue a try: with its shifting secret passages and House Cup point earning, new rules evoke a strong feel of the early movies.

How far should developers take the lineage of a classic game, though? If the hereditary traits of the game’s family tree fade too much, it can become unrecognizable – for example, if Talisman were made into a dice game, would it still feel like Talisman? Maybe not.

That’s the point, though. For some gamers out there, for whatever reason, Talisman didn’t hit the mark. Creating six different colors of the same game won’t bring in new fans. But sometimes, there’s enough interest in a property that game developers can take more than one shot at the target, maybe striking where a different set of gamers can appreciate it. Innovating around the theme of a popular property doesn’t have to dilute the strength of it, but can refine the flavor for different palates. Yes, the brand name is being used to attract old school fans, and the core mechanics might still be supporting the overall structure of gameplay, but change is good and helps keep a game relevant. Evolve or die.

I hope to try Talisman: Kingdom Hearts and Talisman: Batman Super-Villains Edition soon, keeping in mind the new experiences they were designed to be. And I won’t blame them at all if they let me kill things and take their stuff – I’d consider that a bonus.

October 12th, 2018

Founder of Chaosium and longtime game industry trailblazer Greg Stafford passed away yesterday. Greg founded Chaosium to get his work on the fantasy world of Glorantha published, and from there went on to design Pendragon, co-design the roleplaying games of RuneQuest, Ghostbusters, Prince Valiant, and HeroQuest, and influence the entire industry of adventure roleplaying. There’s a lovely post about Greg and his achievements on Chaosium’s site. Please have a look.

His passing brings up memories for me, as I’m sure it does for many Chaosium fans. If you’ll permit me, I’ll share mine here.

For a while in the early 2000’s, I ran RPG.net for Skotos Tech. This meant overseeing the site’s forums, arranging and editing game reviews, coordinating with columnists, and reaching out to publishers for news or review products. My office was in a small, cold room at the back of a building that was once part of the Oakland army base, and had become occupied by Chaosium and Wizard’s Attic. In the same building were a handful of smaller game companies, like a small collective of publishers all huddled around Chaosium and the warehouse rooms for warmth (did I mention it was cold?). When I met Greg Stafford, he was running Issaries Inc., at the opposite side of the warehouse from my office, just past the kitchen and Green Knight Publishing.

In middle school, my classmates and I discovered cryptic gaming notes printed on the back of reams of donated computer paper (usually in non-copyable red or blue ink. It was a simpler time). These notes spoke of the Lunar Empire, of magic based on the red moon, and a behemoth bat-creature that served the Lunar Goddess. I was hooked. I took as many sheets of scratch paper from class as I could, and poured over them in my room at home, trying to decipher their meaning like I was an archeologist who’d found hidden hieroglyphics in an ancient tomb.

I eventually determined these notes were all early ideas from a still-developing fictional world of Glorantha, and Greg, the parent of a student a couple years ahead of me, had donated the glorious notes that hinted of fantasy adventure. I already knew and played Dungeons & Dragons, but this was a new flavor of awesome – bold, distinct, and thorough. In early high school, I was introduced to RuneQuest, and Glorantha, and it all made sense. A completist by nature, I bought all the RQ game products I could find, and Greg’s name was on most, if not all, of them. Glorantha, the campaign world he had designed for RQ, had blown my young mind with its imaginative twists on a medieval fantasy setting.

So when I was introduced to Greg in the little game company just past the warehouse kitchen, he was already a legend in my mind. I’m sure I gushed to him about how formative Glorantha had been for my own roleplaying campaigns. He could have dismissed me as a fanboy and gotten back to work, but he didn’t. He sat there and talked about all sorts of plans and plots, products that never came to be and others that had runaway success beyond his wildest dreams. And this didn’t just happen once – this happened the first day I met him, and many times thereafter when we each just needed a breather from the daily work routine.

Eventually, everyone left the Wizard’s Attic vicinity (to get clear of the wreckage, mostly – you can look up what happened to Wizard’s Attic yourself, it’s not relevant here), and the creative community of the “Chaosium Collective” dispersed to various parts of the San Francisco bay area, then even farther afield. I did my RPG.net job from home for a while, then moved on to other things.

I stopped seeing Greg at local conventions like DunDraCon (I took the picture above at DDC 2006), but I would run into him in downtown Berkeley from time to time, and he’d invite me to walk with him on each occasion. As he purposefully strode across town to the subway station (I always caught him on the way back from something), he would tell me all about the plans he envisioned for Glorantha and other creations of his to make a big comeback, his plans for travel with his family, and what he’d heard other members of the Collective were doing now. Over time, Greg moved away, and I stopped seeing him, but I’d hear about his plans through others, and heard that he’d returned to guiding Chaosium in 2015. Clearly, if you saw him accept the 2018 Silver ENnie Fan Award for Best Publisher on Chaosium’s behalf, Greg never stopped plotting and imagining, and many of us appreciated his efforts.

September 10th, 2018

In his latest Design Diary blog post, Paizo’s Lead Adventure Card Game Designer Mike Selinker describes some of the adjustments gamers can expect in the revised edition of the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. Fans of the game should keep in mind the main game won’t be changing too dramatically – as Selinker stated, “we’re not making this a ‘second edition.’ Our goal isn’t to invalidate anything you have currently”. According to Selinker’s updates, the game is being redesigned to address several factors, including the goals of speeding up gameplay, adding control for varying difficulty, making the co-op game feel more cooperative, and perhaps most importantly, adding more story. Story is always king, so we applaud the notion of increasing influence of the source materials for PACG sets – namely, the Pathfinder RPG Adventure Paths. The new Core Set will be based on the Pathfinder Module The Dragon’s Demand, and the first Adventure Path being translated to the card game will be Curse of the Crimson Throne. If all goes as planned, the revised PACG Core Set should hit stores just before PaizoCon 2019 (so, May 2019).

August 15th, 2018

Gale Force 9 gets Dune license

Gale Force Nine has reached an agreement with the Herbert Estate to publish tabletop games based on the Dune property. This will include a roleplaying game in late 2019, as well as board and miniatures games timed to release just before Legendary Pictures’ Dune movie in 2020. GF9 says it “plans to align with other game companies on numerous categories and formats in the future.” Read: “we are all in on this one.”

Considering how things ended with Last Unicorn Games’ Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium RPG in 2000, this is hopeful news. As the release date for Dune: Chronicles got close, LUG was struggling with debt. The company was bought out by Wizards of the Coast, who released a limited edition of Dune: Chronicles only available at Gen Con and Gen Con UK, never intended to keep it going – after all, that would be a threat to their impending Star Wars d20 RPG. WotC failed to get the Dune license for any other products (some say the Herbert Estate wasn’t really interested in talking with WotC about making a deal; others say the price was too high for WotC), and since then, no publisher of the same caliber has given Dune a go. The only Dune games in the last 18 years have been unofficial, free downloads.

If you want a glimpse of the long out-of-print Last Unicorn Games Dune RPG, head over to OgreCave’s Instagram feed. We’re happy to whet your appetite for the adventures on Arrakis this new license agreement could bring us. We have every confidence GF9 can create a new game that looks at least as great – probably even better. Here’s to hoping.

It’s Morphin’ Time as Power Rangers Kickstarter launches

Early yesterday, Renegade Game Studios unleashed the Kickstarter for Power Rangers: Heroes of the Grid, a new cooperative board game based on Saban’s beloved series TV series. In just over 24 hours, the crowdfunding campaign has amassed pledges reaching more than $150,000 – easily funding the project with more than 22 days left. The love for Power Rangers, which first launched in the United States in 1993, obviously remains strong in the gaming community.

Heroes of the Grid will provide 2-5 players a set of ability cards for each Ranger, and miniatures in the appropriate colors. The core game will also include miniature figures and game stats for Bones, Rita Repulsa, Pudgy Pig, Madame Woe, and the ever-present Putty warriors the Power Rangers must guard against. Gameplay will last 45-60 minutes, wherein players will defend sections of Angel Grove against invading villains. The game was designed by Jonathan Ying, who worked on Star Wars: Imperial Assault, Warhammer 40k: Forbidden Stars, and DOOM: the Board Game.

Multiple expansions are built into the KS campaign, including Shattered Grid, which will have additional challengers from the BOOM Studios comic series, including the Ranger Slayer, Black Dragon, and Lord Drakkon himself. Another expansion, White Light, will bring in the White Ranger, increase the maximum players to 6, and call Lord Zedd to the fray. Added figures and component upgrades are planned as stretch goals, which are likely to be unlocked if the campaign maintains momentum.

If you’ve always wanted to be a Power Ranger and face down nasty foes from other dimensions, you owe it to yourself to give Power Rangers: Heroes of the Grid a look. The game is expected to release in Spring 2019.

(Why were the evil foot soldiers called “putty” anyway? I never got that. Were they squishy and soft? No, that can’t be right…)

June 1st, 2018

2018 Origins Award nominees announced

The Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design has announced their 2018 Origins Award nominees. There will also be Fan Favorite categories, voted on by attendees of the Origins Game Fair (as usual). Let’s peruse the list, shall we? Then, hurry and play all of them so you can make your predictions.

May 15th, 2018

2018 Spiel des Jahres nominees announced

This year’s nominees for the Spiel des Jahres – Germany’s Game of the Year, a highly regarded title in tabletop gaming – have been announced, along with nominees for the Kennerspiel des Jahres (“Expert Game of the Year”, intended for game connoisseurs) and the Kinderspiel des Jahres (“Children’s Game of the Year”). Three titles were nominated for the main Spiel des Jahres award, with the winner to be announced soon:

Finally, a special prize was awarded to Pandemic: Legacy – Season 2, by Matt Leacock and Rob Daviau (Z-Man Games). The award was to acknowledge the “ingenious gameplay” against which “all future legacy games will have to be measured”.

May 6th, 2018

OgreCave review: Goblin Grapple

On the day of it’s Kickstarter launch, Lars Roberts brings us a review of Goblin Grapple from Silver Gaming Company. A fantasy-themed card game of speedy combat, this Stratego-like design is perfect for playing a few rounds between longer games.

April 14th, 2018

Z-Man announces Choose Your Own Adventure co-op game

With board games becoming more story-driven, it makes sense for game publishers to look toward classic adventure stories for design inspiration. It makes even more sense to design a game around the Choose Your Own Adventure books – stories that invented the “gamebook” and captured the imagination of a generation of kids. Z-Man Games has got you covered with Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger, a cooperative board game based on the 1982 book (which was popular enough to be released in seven languages). Due to hit shelves in August 2018, 1–8 players will explore the aforementioned House together as psychic investigators, choosing their adventure path through story cards, gathering item cards, and hunting for clues. From Z-Man’s description:

Do you follow the noise you just heard? Do you venture down the dark cavern? It’s up to you to decide! Investigate the many narrative branches in each of the five exciting chapters, discovering hours of play and thousands of options. Face deadly challenges to find clues or increase your psychic skills. […] As you explore the mysteries of the House of Danger, new clues will guide your investigation, illuminating new paths or equipping you with useful items.

From the Z-Man announcement, the game promises skill development and item usage, two features the original books often struggled to emulate. If Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger is well received by gamers this fall, we could certainly see follow-up titles – after all, the CYOA book series boasts over 180 titles to play through. House of Danger will sell for $24.99.

December 29th, 2017

OgreCave review: Brothers

To close out the year for us, Lars Roberts offers us a review of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons from 505 Games. This adventure game for PC and consoles stands out for its unique controls, which both play off of and add to the game’s story. If you’re in the mood for a heartbreaking faery tale plot with lovely scenics, Lars may have found your next indulgence.

October 27th, 2017

Eleven Games to Play at your Stranger Things Party

More than anything, watching the kids on Stranger Things obsess over their favorite games hits us with heavy nostalgia for those classic games of the 1980s. When you celebrate this modern classic of kids against the supernatural, whether you binge-watch entire seasons or savor each episode slowly, you’ll want an ideal activity to symbolize that you stand with the citizens of Hawkins, right? Don’t be a mouth-breather – grab your Eggos and your wrist-rocket, and check our picks for the best games to capture the feel of Stranger Things.Read more…

September 30th, 2017

Z-Man Games has posted a preview of Pandemic Legacy: Season 2, the follow-up to the critically acclaimed 2015 boardgame. Designers Rob Daviau and Matt Leacock have created a game of both exploration and resource management in the anticipated co-op sequel, which per the “Legacy” line, will permanently alter the year-long game campaign depending on player decisions. In the preview, we learn a bit more about the fragments of civilization that remain in the post-apocalyptic, plague-ridden world. The teaser describes a bit more:

[Season 2] plunges you into a world torn apart by a virulent plague. Those who remain in this post-apocalyptic setting cluster in the few remaining cities, barely eking out an existence. In this harsh environment, antibiotics, food, medicine, tools, and other supplies are precious commodities. […] Only nine cities are on your grid at the beginning of the game, but the tantalizing possibilities of what lies beyond are on full display. Once you have established the appropriate infrastructure in select cities across the map, you can begin to explore some of the lost world by taking the Recon action.

As with Season 1, the game will come in two box colors, but the contents of each will be identical. For 2-4 players, Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 looks to arrive late in Q4 2017.

August 17th, 2017

At Gen Con 50, the winner of this year’s Diana Jones Award for excellence in gaming has been announced as… Gen Con itself! First organized in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin by Gary Gygax himself, Gen Con has grown to become an annual gaming mecca and affirmation of the gaming hobby, currently raging onward in Indianapolis. Other nominees this year were The Beast, a single-player card & journaling game; End of the Line, a hybrid LARP combining Camarilla-style Vampire and Nordic LARP; the fantasy board game Gloomhaven, which was a huge hit on Kickstarter; The Romance Trilogy, a group of relationship-themed RPGs by Emily Care Boss (the first of which, Breaking the Ice, made it onto OgreCave’s 2005 Christmas Gift Guide); and Terraforming Mars, a resource management board game. As always, OgreCave congratulates all the nominees, and Gen Con, “The Best Four Days in Gaming,” for its win this year.

August 12th, 2017

In this Gaming News Update interview, we throw new OgreCave contributor Lars Roberts to the wolves and have her interview Anna Meade, co-author of Uprising: The Dystopian Universe RPG from Evil Hat Productions. Due to hit Kickstarter for a 2018 publication date, Anna tells us about creating the roleplaying setting based on the card games Coup, Coup: Reformation, and The Resistance. She also hints at some confrontational – nay, backstabbing, even – mechanics to the FATE system that Uprising will bring to the table. As bonus features, Anna mentions her novelization of The Dystopian Universe for Indie Boards & Cards, her upcoming appearance as a featured presenter at Gen Con 50 next week, and what fun she’s had expanding tabletop gaming’s inclusivity and representation. Be sure to listen to Anna before attending her seminars next week, and browse our previous podcast episodes for many other game discussions.